Troy didn’t think they could get any louder… but they did. They screamed and shrieked as if the Beatles—or more currently—Justin Bieber, had walked on stage. Troy felt the blood run out of his face.
“Yeah, that ain’t happenin’,” he said into Lady Bareback’s ear. “I’ll be goin’ now.”
“Baby,” she said over the din, “just play along, if you take off your shirt, they’ll go crazy. I’ll protect you, sugar.”
“Now, girls,” Lady Bareback said and turned to the crowd, squeezing Troy’s hand, “how much do we think this gentleman’s shirt is worth?”
Faster than Troy thought possible, hundreds of one-dollar bills flew through the air and onto the stage. It was impossible to count them all, but Troy imagined it might be five-hundred dollars. Lady Bareback arched another eyebrow.
“Well, sugar,” she winked at him, “you think that’s enough to get that shirt off your back?”
Troy took a deep breath… and then another. Dangit, why not? He swiftly unbuttoned the first two buttons of his shirt and Lady Bareback grabbed his hand.
“Whoa there, cowboy,” she said, wagging her index finger at him, “take it nice and slow, sugar.”
Troy could swear he felt the whole crowd swooning. She leaned in close to his ear.
“Give ‘em a show, baby,” she said, “and you’ll make more tonight than you will in a month at your real job.”
She leaned back and winked at him. Turning toward the D.J. booth, she tipped her hat. Immediately, the Tom Jones version of You Can Leave Your Hat On erupted from the speakers. Troy couldn’t help but grin. He had played this song so many times, he knew all the words and all the important beats. After another deep breath, he made the removal of his shirt match every one of those beats, and by the time he had it all unbuttoned, he guessed there might be another five-hundred dollars on the stage.
“Damn, baby,” Lady Bareback said while fanning herself, “you’re a natural.”
With the last line of the song, Troy flipped off his shirt and twirled it over his head. The crowd went wild, and for a good five minutes they cheered and threw more money onto the stage.
Lady Bareback let them make it rain until she felt them cool off. She looked at Troy and licked her lips.
“Now, honeys,” she said, then pointed at Troy’s shorts, “how much for those?”
“Ain’t happenin’, baby,” Troy said. “I’m commando today.”
Lady Bareback took the mic away from her mouth and laughed. Where only he could hear it, she mouthed: “Sugar, you might be able to retire tonight if you get them shorts off. You don’t have to be naked, be creative. Use your hat.”
Exactly one hour and approximately two thousand dollars later, Troy Clint Bodean found himself on stage at the Club One nightclub wearing his flip-flops and his hat… and that was all. He had his hat covering his manhood, and he could feel himself blushing all over his body. But once the shorts had hit the floor, the money began to rain on the stage in huge, fluttering clouds of green. Even Lady Bareback stepped to the side to give Troy the stage solo.
Troy had managed to do a few extra runs up and down the stage without revealing anything a bathing suit would show and the money had poured in. After the song finished, Lady Bareback waved him off stage as the bouncers collected the cash for him.
“Wait for me backstage,” she whispered into his ear, and he couldn’t help but wonder/worry what she wanted with him.
27
Time Is Fleeting
Troy wandered through the dressing rooms, and crowds of transvestite performers grinned at him and slapped his shoulders as he passed by… one even getting in a gentle slap on his left butt cheek. When he came to the door with her name on it, he practically fell inside and made quick work of slipping back into his clothes.
A few minutes later she came into the dressing room, her hat off and shockingly, her wig. Turned out that Lady Bareback was in fact Charles Fry from Fargo, North Dakota… and more shockingly, the owner of Club One.
“Sugar,” he laughed, “I don’t really care why you came tonight, but you just made the club more money in an hour than we made all week.”
Holding out a Ziploc bag stuffed full of cash, he shook his head and patted his chest like his heart was thumping. “I’ve never seen anything like that, honey,” he said and inhaled deeply, “since my days back in Miami.”
“That so?” Troy said, and shrugged. “I guess it was beginner’s luck.”
“Mmhmm.” The performer began to remove the sparkly cowboy… er… cowgirl getup. “Don’t be surprised if you receive a few winks and nudges when you walk down the street in the next week or two.”
Troy changed the subject. “So, you own Club One?”
“Sure do,” he said, “since about ten years ago. It was just a gay club back then. I worked hard to bring my South Beach sensibilities and a killer drag show to the stage, and the rest is history.”
Troy rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, now… speaking of killers…”
“Ooh,” Charles Fry said, and pursed his lips into a Cher-esque smile and shook his shoulders, “that sounds interesting.”
“Yeah, well, that’s kinda why I’m here tonight,” Troy said. “I think you might be in a particularly effective position to track someone I think might be involved in the… the death of Tayler… that kid over at the college.”
Charles’s darkened. “Ugly business, that. Do they know it was a murder now?”
Troy was taken aback. “Oh, uh, well…” he stuttered, “they haven’t actually come to that conclusion just yet. But I’m hopin’ to point them in a direction that might clear it up.”
“That poor boy was murdered,” Charles said, “ain’t no two ways about it. He used to come in with his buddies. I don’t think he was gay, but he certainly had friends who were. Happy kid, everything going for him. No chance he killed himself.”
Troy wondered how much he could trust this man with what he knew about Mortimer. “Well, I’m wondering if you might know someone,” he started with caution. “A professor. From the college.”
“Which one, sugar?” Charles asked through puffed cheeks. “Quite a few are regulars here.”
Troy wondered if Mortimer might happen to be a friend of Lady Bareback’s. He decided to lay it all out. For the next few minutes, he told the whole story about how and why he thought Mortimer LeFleur could be Tayler Evan’s killer.
“Hmmmm,” the performer said, “I do know who he is. He’s a regular. Always comes in for the dueling pianos on Wednesday nights and sometimes the amateur nights on Tuesday and Thursday. I think that’s about it.”
“So, I hate to ask this, but,” – Troy drew a breath across his teeth – “do you have security video in the club?”
“Honey,” he laughed, “if I didn’t have a security feed in here, the po-po would shut me down faster than a two-dollar hooker with a fifty-dollar bill. You got a date in mind?”
Troy smiled, he liked this guy… er, girl… whatever! “The painting was stolen on Friday the eighteenth,” he said, “I have that much on the museum’s video feed.”
Charles Fry had completely transformed while they talked. Instead of a buxom blond cowgirl, he now looked like a man you might see in a hardware store selling plumbing supplies. He slapped his knees and stood up.
“Let’s go have a look,” he said, ushering Troy toward the door.
As they went into the backstage hallway, several of the performers gave Troy a round of applause.
“Don’t worry, girls,” Charles said into the air, “he won’t be performing regularly.”
Laughter filled the hall as they walked toward his office. He unlocked the door and sat down at a gunmetal gray office desk. Next to a laptop was a framed picture of Charles, a beautiful Asian woman, and a small child… maybe two years old. Noticing Troy’s stare, he smiled.
“Not all performers are gay, Troy,” he said, “but if you couldn’t tell, we’ve done our job.”
&nbs
p; He tapped a few keys on the laptop and turned it around so Troy could see the screen.
“Push the arrow keys to slow down or speed up, hit the number keys to make a certain camera feed full screen, and the spacebar to pause,” Charles said.
Troy quickly figured out the system and toggled through the feed, watching as the club got more crowded as the hour got later. And then he found him. Sitting at the bar, and sipping on a tall, pink drink with an umbrella and a twisty straw… was Mortimer LeFleur.
He hit the forward button and watched the entire evening flutter by in super high speed. With the exception of a couple of quick bathroom breaks, Mortimer stayed on the barstool all night from seven p.m. to one-thirty a.m. So, he wasn’t the figure that Troy had watch steal the painting on the video from the museum.
“Dangit,” he muttered.
“So, your number one suspect is in the clear, eh?” Charles asked.
“Yup, for the heist anyway.” Troy’s mind flashed with another thought. “Can we dial up the Wednesday night footage?” he asked.
Wednesday was the night Tayler allegedly hung himself… the night he suspected the killer had murdered him.
“Sure thing,” Charles said, and Troy noticed he’d stopped calling him sugar… all part of the act he supposed.
He clicked a few keys, brought up the video, and watched as Troy made his way through the feed. He watched through all of the various views from around the club and scanned hour after hour of the Wednesday night recording. No sign of LeFleur.
“Well, he wasn’t here the night that Tayler died,” Troy said, “but it wouldn’t make sense for him to be the killer if he didn’t take the painting.”
“I don’t know about that.” Charles idly clicked through a couple of the video feeds. “Have you ever considered that the two things might be coincidental? I mean, maybe the thief is just taking advantage of the suicide… or maybe murder.”
“Yeah.” Troy felt his shoulders slump. “I guess that could be the case. It just made so much sense for—”
“Hold on a second,” Charles interrupted. “Isn’t that… isn’t that the boy you’re talking about?”
He turned the computer screen toward Troy and there, walking into the front door of Club One… was Tayler Evan. Troy clicked the spacebar to pause the video and looked at the time and date stamp: August 16th – 9:13:12 PM.
“Hot dang.” Troy hit the play button.
In slow motion, he watched Tayler come into the club followed by his friends: the white girl who’d liked his hat, the boy he thought they had called Alain, and holding onto his arm, the blind Japanese kid. Behind them all, walking in as if she was trying not to be seen, was Samantha.
He watched the night unfold as Tayler drank more and more – all bought for him by his friends – and eventually, he watched him get carried out to a cab by Alain. The others stayed at the bar for a few minutes, but then, one by one, they all left too. Except for Becky. He rewound the tape and saw that she’d disappeared earlier… around 10:15.
“Coulda been any one of ‘em,” Troy mumbled.
“Or LeFleur,” Charles chimed in.
Troy jumped as he realized the man was still watching with him.
“Hey, could you copy these on a drive or somethin’ for me?” he asked.
Charles Fry nodded. “Come by tomorrow morning. I’ll pick up a flash drive and copy the whole week for you.”
“Thanks,” Troy said as he stood up.
Numb with shock and confusion at the events he’d just watched, he walked out of the club and out to the street. He clicked on his phone and dialed Samantha. At this time of morning, he expected to get voicemail, but it sounded like someone picked up.
“Hey, Sami,” he said, “is that you? Where are you? What’s going on?”
The line went dead.
“Dangit,” Troy mumbled as he jogged back down the street toward his apartment.
28
Cracking Up
Samantha Eliza Dawn awoke with the taste of blood in her mouth. She was sitting in a rickety wooden chair and her hands were bound behind her. It felt like they were wrapped with half a roll of duct tape. Similarly, her ankles were wound tightly and strapped to the legs of the chair, and her mouth was covered with tape as well. The room around her was nearly pitch black… the floor felt like cold, smooth concrete under her bare feet
She grunted from behind the tape and a metallic echo reverberated into the blackness. She tried to turn to look around, but the back of her neck stabbed her with a knife of pain. That’s when she remembered she’d been attacked when she answered her apartment door.
Whoever it was had been wearing a dark hoody with their face hidden in shadows. The intruder had slammed the door open, grabbed Samantha by the neck, and thrown her down on the floor. Her head hit the carpeted floor so hard it sent stars flying across her vision. Within seconds, she had blacked out.
The next thing she knew, she was here. Alone, in the dark, and bleeding from some kind of injury to her mouth. She wondered if she’d forgotten the intruder hitting her there… or maybe she’d bitten her own tongue when she fell. Either way, her mouth was taped shut, so she had to swallow the blood. Her stomach was protesting and she hoped she wouldn’t throw up behind her gag.
As she sat in the darkness, she went through a gamut of emotions. First, naturally, was fear. Sheer terror screamed in her brain as she wondered if she would be the next victim of Tayler’s murderer. But then it struck her that she wasn’t entirely sure this was Tayler’s murderer. Had to be. Was it LeFleur? Maybe. She couldn’t see who the figure was, but they were definitely strong. And then more confusion began to take over. Why?
Why was she being attacked? Had Troy told LeFleur she was onto him? Oh, God… what if something had happened to Troy? What if nobody realized she was missing until it was too late? She groaned behind the tape. What if she was about to die? Terror took over again and she strained against her bonds.
“So,” said an electronically altered voice from behind her – a cross between the Jigsaw killer from the Saw movies and Darth Vader – “you’re awake.”
Samantha froze. She could see nothing. The room was beginning to fade into view a little from a light source she couldn’t see behind her. It appeared to be an empty garage or storage room of some kind. The walls were concrete block and the roof was metal.
The sound of metal scraping against something rough echoed behind her. Shhhhingggg. Then again. Shhhhinnnggggg. A knife against a sharpener? Her terror took on a whole new level, as tears began to form in her eyes and run down her cheek and a groan formed deep in her chest.
“Just had to start poking around,” the altered voice said. “No reason to, really. But you just had to dig deeper and start poking holes in the story… poor Tayler’s tragic story.”
She shook her head and mumbled under the tape. The scraping sound got closer and Samantha involuntarily shrieked. She heard the sound of something heavy dropping to the floor… a thunk… maybe the sharpening stone?
Her breathing became frantic and mucus began to run from her nose and mingle with her tears. She jerked back and forth, but a heavy gloved hand grabbed her shoulder to steady her.
The ice-cold metal of the long, sharp blade she still couldn’t see slipped in between the tape and her skin. It nicked her a little, but then sliced the duct tape and the gloved hand jerked it off her face. She screamed as it ripped away from her head, pulling out hair as it went.
“Please, God, don’t kill me,” she moaned.
The room was silent.
“Why are you doing this?” she said, and sniffed.
Footsteps seemed to move away from her into the darkness and she tried to turn her head. The tiniest crack of light was sneaking in under what might’ve been a door. She could see heavy black boots on her attacker’s feet.
“Everything was going exactly as planned,” the strange voice said, “and then you and your friends started talking. Talking about what happened to
Tayler.”
“So, it’s true,” Samantha said. “Tayler didn’t commit suicide. You killed him.”
The voice laughed… a strange, echoing sound through the electronic filter.
“An untimely death, I know,” the voice said, “given his recent success with the painting of you.”
Something sounded odd about the emphasis on the word you. Something familiar.
“A painting that would’ve lived and died in oblivion if not for me,” the voice continued. “In a way, I’ve given young Tayler the greatest gift an artist could receive. Immortality.”
Samantha began to feel emboldened and angry.
“Not like that’ll do him any good since he’s dead now,” she spat, “and if I have anything to do with it, you’ll go down for his murder. I know exactly who you—”
Samantha was interrupted as the gloved hand suddenly slammed into the back of her head. She screamed in pain and she tumbled, chair and all over on her side. Her face rested on the cool concrete. It felt good against her throbbing head.
“You’ll do nothing,” the voice said quickly, “except die by your own hand. A sad, moody little girl who lost her boyfriend to a senseless suicide. The papers will love it. Romeo and Juliet for the modern world.”
Samantha felt new tears streaming from her eyes. “But why?” she moaned.
“If you don’t know that,” the voice sneered, “then you clearly don’t know anything about me.”
That was a weird thing for the killer to say. Samantha didn’t know who it was… why would she know anything about—
Her thoughts were interrupted by the strong, gloved hands jerking her chair back upright.
“But, I can’t have you dying with any marks on you,” the voice said, getting farther away from her. “For now, I’ll let you heal. A week should do the trick.”
“I won’t eat,” Samantha said, “I’ll die of starvation first.”
The Complete Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Collection Page 82